Personal finance, career building, freedom, investing, corporate-dom and the IT industry geek.
My personal adventures in hacking life.

May 2008

May 16, 2008

They replaced the screen yesterday. But it was cracked, no problem, as long as they come back and fix it (but if you note below, they don't think it's worth the cost benefit, they'd rather just throw me a bone)

Back in February I sprung for the extra gigabyte of RAM. I thought it would be fantastic for the slow as snails Microsoft Vista.

Well last night I thought I'd check if anything else was wrong with my lemon of a laptop (it's actually a great laptop, but my specific one - lemon).

Lo and behold. It's missing an entire gigabyte of RAM that I paid for. After all I've seen at Lenovo... I just wasn't that surprised. Great laptop, horrible service. They must have run out of money after they hired all those engineers (I don't believe there are better laptop engineers out there!)

Here is an email I sent to the relevant parties at Lenovo and IBM (and Apple). I also sent further private emails to the CEO of Lenovo (Bill Amelio) and IBM (Sam Palmisano).

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To all involved,

I understand the effort and expense you have all gone to in replacing my screen. I appreciate the expense, time and effort. There is no doubt in my mind that people have worked very hard behind the scenes to help make things right. You have all been one of them and I do appreciate that. However, there are still some ongoing concerns and there are outlined below.

Attached are pictures of what has been mentioned as 'something we probably don't cover under warranty, as I have heard from third party sources, but could be wrong, that the damage is purely superficial and does not impact the use of the screen.' yeah right, look at the pictures.

Picture no. one is timestamped 15 minutes after the technician left, I realised I better have evidence, as all along the way I have been treated like I have been wrong, and have only received a replacement screen as some sort of 'above the realms of normal service' exception. Note you cannot see the crack from front on, and neither the technician nor myself noticed it, until I looked at an angle after I had turned the machine off. The next picture is after one day of normal use. It has cracked all the way through. I am still using it, but I will not be moving it.

As for your offer of a full refund.

I reject your refund offer. The cost of downtime as I try to get another laptop running is not negotiable. This machine has already cost me money in down time. A refund offer does not even begin to cover the cost of my time.

As I have mentioned from day dot, all I have ever wanted is a laptop that works.

I do not enjoy being treated like I am wrong, and that somehow I am responsible for your loss of money on this transaction. I very well know you are losing money on this. I do not care.

You bought into a contract to supply me with a laptop that worked and as specified. You did not.

When you repaired it, you went into contract with me to repair it correctly. You did not.

Here is a summary of events, and let me know if this isn't how you see it.

What I did wrong:

I broke my power jack, and then paid you guys to fix it.

What it has cost me:

Time. Downtime for my business

Money. My Vodafone wireless internet still gets paid even if I don't have a laptop to use it on.

What you guys did wrong from the moment I bought it:

6 weeks to ship

Brown stained screen

Broken microphone

No Multitouch as specifically ordered on the phone (check your recording)

Did not supply and install 1 extra gigabyte of ram, as specifically ordered and paid for (I'll agree that I did not notice this till two days ago, but it was an unexpected surprise)

What you guys did wrong since repair:

Took 6 weeks to repair, of which for 4 weeks you lost my signed agreement for repair and did not begin repairs on my machine until my laptop had been sitting in your repair shop for 4 weeks.

Still did not supply a Multitouch screen.

Treated me like some kind of cost blackhole and therefore something to be avoided at all cost.

What you guys did right:

Given me onsite service, the technician was fantastic. Apart from the broken screen, I was very much impressed by his work.

And now:

You want me to take a refund of invoice amount?

It's going to cost me to take that refund, and you're refunding me... wait for it.., for RAM you never even installed!?

Here is my non-negotiable offer of three options:

Send a technician to my house next week.

Replace broken screen (Multitouch or SXGA your choice, whatever is faster)Install the RAM that was paid for but never received or installedExtend my warranty to 3 years from the minute the technician leaves my house.Provide me with a heavy discount on the next X series tablet.

Or.

Replace the screen with the one the technician took away (a non multitouch), install and supply the RAM. Swap my X61T for the next X series tablet at launch.

Or

Replace it with another X61T Multitouch, replace the hard disk with the one I'm using now so that no data is lost.Provide me with a heavy discount on the next X series tablet.I honestly love your laptops. When they work. I want to tell the world how great they are. I could have taken a refund a long time ago, and just shut the hell up. but I stayed and fought because I actually do like the laptop. I wouldn't have made the purchase otherwise. I know you guys can do better too. I'm not a customer that wants to go away. I want to tell everyone how awesome Lenovo is.

Problems are somethings that we deal with everyday, and they aren't anything to worry about. It's only when they blow out of proportion and aren't handled right, then they become something that is an issue. Regards,

I think there's a story here around being who you are being made up of what you do, but more importantly what you do not do.

It's a dificult thing, and it took me six years of dawdling before I realised who I wasn't going to be. I wasn't clear about what I wasn't willing to do, and in return I ended up being everything to everyone, the Jack of All Trades. If you let others control your destiny, you end up being and doing what others want and not what you want.

Can you imagine how uncomfortable some companies would be if they dropped their PR division, or fired their homepage designers?

It's the difference between the Doing Men, and the Maybe and Sorry Men.

Are you clear about who you aren't?

Are you clear about about what you won't do?

Some thoughts for Monday.

Flickr Cred: Thomas HawkThe title is once again tongue in cheek. I was reading some scrawled pen marks in 'The One Minute Manager' by Blanchard and Johnson, it said 'No one does nothing to you, you do it to yourself.' Nice meaning, odd writing.

Oh and Activision blew analysts expectations away, putting on over 15% on Friday.

May 09, 2008

Too many stocks, too little money. Age old problem, and here I was trying to scry an answer.

8 weeks ago, the market was dipping low, and an opportune moment to reinvest large chunks of cash. Here were the decisions keeping me up at night:

1. Activision. You know them as the makers of Guitar Hero and Call of Duty 4. They are merging with Blizzard. You know them as the makers of World of Warcraft and Starcraft.

2. Take Two Interactive. You know them as Grand Theft Auto IV. Electronic Arts (famous for SimCity, The Sims and all those sport games) were offering to buy them.

3. AMP Chinese stock fund. This makes sense, the Chinese Yuan will appreciate for the next few decades, but so will the mining Aussie dollar. The Chinese stock market is set to grow.

4. Challenger. I've spoken about these guys before. They run a tight ship, and buying in would mean a 'P/B' ratio of 1. That means for every dollar you invest, you're actually getting ONE dollar of the underlying 'net assets.' A simplistic view is if they go bankrupt today, they will sell all their assets, pay off all their debts, and hopefully you'll get about what you paid back.

This is rare in finance companies. My expectation is that although their mortgage division will stifle, in a recession people will consume less, but save more. This means low interest rates, high inflation and increased use of financial planners and managed funds. Which is right up Challenger's alley.

They aren't wall street heroes either, they are extremely cost conscious and you won't be seeing their staff flying around in hired Bentleys or private jets. I like that. You know those corporate executives with private jets? They aren't looking after their shareholders.

The decision I made in the end wasn't that hard.

I liked Activision, they had heart. EA didn't have heart, and Grand Theft Auto, while I would play it, doesn't seem to be the most tasteful game in the world. EA's slogan is 'it's in the game.' I think Activision and Blizzard have the same motto:

With heart.

Oh by the way, Activision announced they doubled last years revenue to $2.9 billion dollars. This is a company valued at $8 billion. Just WOW.

epilogue - I just checked the opening price of ATVI (Activision) it's now pushing over $30. At this rate I can kick up my feet for another month. I haven't closed out my position yet, as I believe this stock has further to go (no I'm not giving advice, and nor should you construe it as such, this is ALL opinion!)

May 02, 2008

I'm just a customer service assistant, packer, accountant, finance clerk, cleaner, checkout clerk or security guard. But that's how you lose the plot.

I've had an ongoing debacle with Lenovo.

On the face of it, it's a simple business.

Build and sell laptops. If you had to write a plot summary for the Lenovo movie, those would be the 4 words.

Some people they hire are fantastic. But everybody in Lenovo has a 'title.' That's great if it gives you something valuable to do, but not if it robs you of power. Worst of all, it should never distract anybody from your business (which is to build and sell laptops, just in case Lenovo staff read this and forgot).

Here are some real life quotes (not strictly verbatim) from Lenovo staff:

'I'm just in sales, I don't know technical, you'll have to ask the engineers'

'Sorry sir, that's not in our policy to receive pdfs in emails, only faxes.' (Anyone spot the irony here?)

'I'm just in customer service, you'll have to ask repairs for an ETA.'

What if they started focusing on doing the right thing? They might take a leaf out of Vodafone and Optus who had the following to say to me:

'Look you are a great customer, I know we're not wrong here, and you're not wrong, we're sorry you had a problem, and look it's a waste of time for us to escalate this to management... I'm not suppose to do this, but look lets just waive the fee this once okay!'

'Oh it's disappointing that you're cancelling your account Mr. Yong, but let me check with my manager right now if we can waive your exit fee anyway, you've been with us a long time! Please wait one moment <brief pause> It's been approved, thanks for your patience sir.'

The conversation changes. Completely.

It's Friday, so relax. But on Monday, think about doing the right thing, not just your job description.

Next time you get asked what you do, whether you're the cleaner or the CEO, you might say 'I'm helping mums and dads save money,' or 'I'm helping make and sell the best laptops', 'Helping kids grow into good people' or 'I'm making sure our customers want to use us again.'

A hint for Lenovo: Fire everyone with the job description 'Sorry - that's not my responsibility', then spend that money on hiring half the number of people and give them the job description 'Goal #1 Help Lenovo make and sell laptops. Goal #2 Create and retain customers. Goal #3 Spend saved 'Sorry Men' money on creating and keeping good customers.'